Wind power covers record 61% of Spanish electricity demand

On 18 April wind power in Spain reached a new record by producing 317 GW hours of electricity and beating the previous record of 315 GWh recorded on 9 November 2010, according to Red Eléctrica de España (REE). Moveover, during the morning of 19 April, wind power beat previous records by covering 61.06 % of Spain’s electricity demand.

From 1-18 April, wind power produced a total of 3,094 GWh – a 42.7% increase compared to the same period the previous year. On 18 April wind covered an average of 45% of the electricity demand (317 GWh) putting it far ahead of nuclear (163 GWh), coal (72 GWh) and combined-cycle gas (44 GWh).

The new record for electricity demand met was made at 1:37 in the early hours of 19 April (61% of electricity demand with 24.384 MW), beating the earlier record of 60.46% recorded on 16 April 2011 at 3.48am.

Spain has a total installed wind farm capacity of 21,674 MW – the second biggest capacity in Europe coming just after Germany’s 29,060 MW.

Zoë Casey, http://blog.ewea.org